One of the most valuable and oldest paleoanthropological exhibits in the world will be on display in the opening hall of the new exhibition Humans and its predecessors in the Historical Building of the National Museum from 25 August this year. In Europe, the original skeletal remains of one of man's earliest ancestors will be on display for the first time ever.
Prague will also be visited by Selam, a fossil of a small child of an identical species to Lucy, but roughly 100,000 years older, which was found in the same location 25 years later. Both exhibits are the most precious items of Ethiopia's national cultural heritage and their loan is being held by agreement between the two countries with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism of Ethiopia.
"I am delighted that during my visit to Ethiopia in the autumn of 2023 we managed to arrange for the Lucy and Selam fossils to be exhibited in Prague. This is an absolutely unique event, as the original fossil will be exhibited to the public for the first time in Europe. I would like to thank first of all Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and also Minister Selamawit Kassa for lending us the most valuable exhibits of Ethiopia's national cultural heritage to the Czech Republic. I appreciate it very much," said the Prime Minister Petr Fiala. Colleagues from the National Museum and the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Addis Ababa were also intensively involved in the project. The loan was also on the agenda of Deputy Prime Minister Marian Jurecka's meeting in Ethiopia last December.
A unique archaeological find discovered more than 50 years ago by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and his student Tom Gray in Ethiopia's Afar Triangle near the village of Hadar caused a huge sensation in 1974, and even today it is one of the oldest hominin representatives that may have been a direct ancestor of the genus Homo. Lucy gets her name from a Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamondswhich was played over and over by the expedition team the night after the find. In Ethiopia, it is also known as Dinkinesh, which means "you are beautiful" in Amharic.
Lucy is a species of extinct hominin, a family of hominids that lived 3.8-2.9 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia, an area that was crucial to human evolution. Its age was determined by scientists from the layer of volcanic rock in which the fossil was found. Lucy was roughly 106 centimetres tall, weighed 28 kilograms, and resembled a chimpanzee when the bones were assembled (47 are preserved, about 40 percent of the skeleton). The small brain and upper body structure were similar to those of chimpanzees, apes, while the pelvic and leg bones were already very similar in function to those of members of the genus Homo, which certainly indicates that Lucy is a species that is among the ancestors of modern humans, who already walked upright on two limbs. Sex was determined by the structure of the pelvic bones. Other features determined that Lucy had already reached adulthood, even though she was only 15-16 years old, because early hominins matured earlier than modern humans.
Thanks to its good preservation, it was possible for the first time to reconstruct the overall appearance and way of life of the Australopithecines quite accurately. None of the later palaeoanthropological finds have met with such great public interest and had such a significant impact on our understanding of evolution. Ethiopia will also loan the skeletal remains of Australopithecus afarensis called Selam to the National Museum in Prague. This is a very well preserved fossil of a young child, approximately 3.3-3.2 million years old, found in 2000 near the site of Lucy's discovery, approximately ten kilometres from Hadar in the Dikika locality. The find is roughly 100,000 years older than Lucy.
"I am extremely happy that we managed to get such an exceptional loan, which really doesn't happen every day. Lucy and Selam are unique documents about our civilization and about our history in all its dimensions and dimensions. I would like to thank both my colleagues from Ethiopia and the National Museum, which has long been brilliantly dedicated to making our history accessible to the general public. And commemorating history is also one of the important tasks of the Department of Culture and of any democratic government. We will have the opportunity to admire these precious objects of Ethiopia's national cultural heritage for 60 days," says the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic Martin Baxa.
"Welcoming Lucy and Selam into their spaces is the dream of every museum in the world. The National Museum is now beginning to realise that dream. Some of our planet's most treasured exhibits provide a unique glimpse into the past and allow us to better understand the roots of humanity. I very much appreciate the trust and helpfulness of the Ethiopian side. The opportunity to exhibit these unique world treasures in the Czech Republic on the occasion of the opening of the exposition parts The man and his predecessors are a great honour and commitment for us, but also proof that the National Museum is one of the top museum institutions," says the Director General of the National Museum Michal Lukes.
The new permanent exhibition of the National Museum called People will form one of the most important expositions in the world devoted to man and will also bring the most comprehensive presentation of anthropology, prehistory and material culture in the Czech Republic. The closely interconnected sections Man and his predecessors and The Story of Prehistoric History will seamlessly link anthropological, archaeological and cultural anthropological perspectives. The hyperrealistic models, including the Lucy model created for the National Museum by the French sculptor Élisabeth Daynès, whose work can be admired by visitors to world museum institutions, will be particularly visually attractive to visitors. The author of the unusual architectural design of the exhibition is architect Petr Janda. The contractor of the exhibition is the Nüssli company.
The loan of the two exhibits is the first step in the mutual cooperation of museums in both countries. The National Museum will also participate in the modernization and development of museums in Ethiopia.
Government of the Czech Republic/ National Museum/ gnews - RoZ
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